cyberil

Hi please can you help

I'm hoping someone can help me on here. I live in the UK and have had my 2 door 2011 JK for the last 7 years and driven around 70,000 miles on it. I have a 2 1/2 Terraflex lift with additional hockey puck spacers (1/2 in at front and 1 1/2 in at rear due to sagging springs) and 35" tires.

The Jeep drives like utter garbage, and is bordering on dangerous. I'm thinking of selling it. The steering is very vague, I run 35's but it all used to be OK but has got more vague over time. Last month I had new heavy duty front ball joints (upper and lower) installed on the front and 2 new front axle shafts thinking this would help things. It didn't really help. I then took the Jeep in for the tracking and 2 garages found the front track arm seized. I'm just really not sure what I need as I want to get the steering back to how it was (not necessarily how it was when stock). I'm on a budget as I'm getting married soon and parts in the UK are 50% more expensive. I've been told I need a new adjustable front track bar to do the tracking properly (this was fixed temporarily by pointing the wheels in but after 2 weeks its back to the same old wandering down the highway), I've also been told adjustable upper and lower track arms , steering shock (I have Fox all round) and springs (I have Teraflex) but I'm not certain this is necessary, as right now budget dictates as I and I'd like to order the jL in a couple of months.

I hoping that someone who really knows their stuff can really help me. BTW this is my daily driver and is mostly used on the highway, and England has lots of windy roads and roundabouts (circles) to navigate

Thanks

Paul

P.S. Sorry to anybody that has already read this post on another forum, I'm just searching for answers

resharp001

Your post is a little confusing, and can’t tell if your referring to the components with proper terminology.

The front track bar is only centering the axle under the jeep (side to side). Are you possibly referring to the tie rod which is linking the left and right knuckle together and what you would use to set your toe (pointing the wheels in/out)? Are you saying the tie rod ends were seized and therefore couldn’t be adjusted? Having your toe out of spec would cause some abnormal wear on your tires, but not make it drive THAT bad.

You’re speaking of control arms here. Do you currently have adjustable control arms, or are they suggesting that you get some? Do you currently have any sort of caster correction (adjustable control arms, control arm geo brackets, or cam bolts)? If you don’t, most of your problem is highly likely just caster that is too low. You may or may not have a worn joint in the mix as well, but let’s start with the caster idea and figure out what you’re working with as far as equipment.


Understand that as you lifted the jeep, a byproduct is you lower the caster. Lower caster is going to lead to crappier steering/driving experience unless you use some means of raising the caster again. Have either of those shops giving you a print out of your alignment specs?

Rednroll

What Resharp said.

Start by getting an alignment check and posting it up for the rest of us to look at. The shop should have given you one, if you had an alignment done. If not, go back and ask for it. Currently most of us will have some suspicions of what may or may not be going on and some recommendations based upon those assumptions. Posting an alignment sheet from the shop will help take a lot of the guess work and 20 questions back and forth out of it, so others can better assist.

TheDirtman

Read the link in my signature for some explanation of components and what they do. Post up your actual lift height. For 33" tires you don't need as much lift as you state you are running and the higher you lift the more issues you have with steering and wandering if you don't replace everything under the jeep.

Smudgeontheglass

If you're on a budget, the two things that I would recommend is an aftermarket adjustable track bar and control arm brackets. The stock track bar can bend and flex with larger tires giving the steering a vague feeling. The control arm brackets with greatly adjust the castor angle of your axle and improve handling (assuming you have no other castor correction).

Your tie rod being seized is something I am currently dealing with. It happens when you deal with harsh roads and road salt.

Mark Doiron

What others have posted. But a couple thoughts on this comment above: Many folks with smaller lifts opt for only adjustable front lower control arms, not both. That allows the caster to be adjusted, which is the usual cause of wandering steering after a lift. In addition, once you have adjustable LCAs, you need to adjust the caster to other than OEM specs. If the shop adjusts for OEM specs, then you'll probably have some wandering. It's a driveway job, BTW, if you have a few tools. Google "Jeep JK Alignment" and you'll come up with a few hits describing the settings, job and tools.

One last thought: You might check your tire pressures. Since you're letting a shop work on it, perhaps someone did you the "favor" of pumping the tires up to the rated maximum on the tire.